Trinity Mirror shares fall £20m as phone-hack scandal spreads

- Phone hack scandal spreads beyond News International for first time- Shares in Trinity Mirror drop more than 12 per cent
Legal action: Sven-Goran Eriksson and former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan
Tom Harper23 October 2012

Almost £20 million was wiped off the value of Trinity Mirror today after the newspaper company was dragged into the phone-hacking scandal.

Shares in the publisher of the Mirror newspapers and the Sunday People plummeted after it emerged the company is being sued by four celebrities who allege their voicemails were intercepted.

Former England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson and ex-Blackburn Rovers football captain Garry Flitcroft are among claimants to issue proceedings against Trinity Mirror.

It is the first time the phone-hacking scandal has spread beyond Rupert Murdoch’s News International empire.

Today, shares in Trinity Mirror were trading at 63p — a drop of more than 12 per cent. The stock has fallen 84 per cent in the last five years and the company is now valued at £161.7 million.

Phone-hacking claims against Trinity Mirror could be potentially catastrophic. News International has spent almost £140 million on legal fees since the scandal erupted.

Johnathan Barrett, of N+1 Singer stock market analysts, said: “The claims will weigh on the shares, in part because many had assumed [phone-hacking] was fading away as an issue.”

Eriksson’s case relates to the Daily Mirror when Piers Morgan was editor. Now a prime-time TV host on CNN in the United States, Morgan has repeatedly denied knowledge of phone hacking.

Mr Flitcroft is suing Trinity Mirror over a “kiss and tell” story in the Sunday People that he claims played a part in driving his father to suicide.

The 40-year-old had two affairs exposed in March 2002 when the Court of Appeal lifted an injunction banning the identification of him and the women.

He told the Leveson inquiry into press standards that his father had watched every game he’d played since he was seven, but suffered “aggression and anxiety” and told him: “I can’t come and watch you again,” because of the taunting the footballer received from the terraces.

He added: “It’s a long time from my dad committing suicide to when it came out in the papers. But all I can say is that it affected him a lot.

“Something was taken out of his life that he loved doing. I would say over the years his depression got worse.”

A Trinity Mirror spokesman declined to comment.

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